Work Log

Many people start using Zimbra as email client. I personally think that even if it’s a good initiation, it is too unfledged now for it too be a truly useful software. Personally the only reason why I’m using it is that this is the only email client that can deal with my three hundred thousand (300 000) emails without blinking an eye. Basing a database on a database is an idea that has become more and more inevitable nowadays. I’m waiting for the first true database file system to became available.

However this discussion is about Zimbra and specifically about zimlets.  Main features missing from zimbra:

• gpg/pgp support
• random signature generation (specifically calling a shell script when is to sign a letter)
• distributed synchronization / secure synchronization. (this is a very interesting problem mainly connected to zimbra desktop and not necessary present in zimbra ose)

The best shot to target these insufficiencies is, not too surprisingly, the plug-in system. Whereas it is fairly easy to install a zimlet on the server using

zmzimletctl deploy my_zimlet.zip

does not work on desktop. The specific equivalent line on zdesktop is:

java -cp jetty/lib/log4j-1.2.8.jar:jetty/common/lib/commons-httpclient-3.0.jar:jetty/common/lib/mail.jar:jetty/common/lib/commons-logging.jar:jetty/common/lib/commons-codec-1.3.jar:jetty/common/lib/json.jar:jetty/common/lib/dom4j-1.5.jar:jetty/common/lib/zimbracommon.jar:jetty/webapps/service/WEB-INF/lib/zimbrastore.jar -Dzimbra.config=conf/localconfig.xml com.zimbra.cs.zimlet.ZimletUtil deploy zimlets/com_zimbra_zimlet_name.zip

cheers